Evaluating California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Credits and Trading Mechanism and its Potential Suitability for China (May 2014 / Clean Transportation Program)

Although China has committed itself to ambitious energy consumption reduction policies and has already started incentivizing the commercial development of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) and related infrastructure, it is clear that more aggressive, comprehensive, and innovative approaches are in need. The California ZEV-Credits scheme has been identified as a truly innovative program with high contribution value to support low-carbon development while greatly incentivizing market players to innovate commercial solutions. The ZEV-credits scheme has recently received the attention of national decision-makers (among which are NDRC, MOF, MIIT) as well as local planners (mainly local DRCs). iCET’s “Evaluating California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Credits and Trading Mechanism and its Potential Suitability for China” report, supported by the Energy Foundation, was released earlier this month. Through the single case study of global electric car leader Tesla Motors, this work has demonstrated the capacity building the ZEV credits program provided for small manufacturers in a fast evolving and highly dominated market place.